Cranky-D

I have been contemplating just what Memorial Day means to me, and as Dan suggested yesterday, what the freedom others have bought for me with their lives means to me. It hasn’t been as easy as I thought it would be. One thing I don’t want to do is complain, so while we all know things could be better, I intend to simply celebrate what we have now. I will go back to complaining tomorrow.

I don’t have a direct connection to the day. I have been lucky in that I have not lost any relatives (that I know of) to any war. My grandfather on my mother’s side lost a leg in WWI. My father joined the Navy at 17 and spent a few years on a destroyer chasing German subs and whatnot in WWII. A favorite uncle fought in Korea and came home physically undamaged. My brother volunteered for the Air Force in 1972 and fixed radios in Okinawa, and later in Germany after the U.S. left Vietnam.

Of course, I have no idea of their experiences, really, since it’s not something they talk(ed) about. My father usually says, when he mentions it at all, that being in the Navy meant he finally got enough to eat every day. When they served liver, he was in heaven, because most everyone else didn’t want to eat it. He did mention the friends he lost on board the ship during attacks. He talked about it one time and one time only. My uncle never said a word about his experiences, and he is gone now. My brother hasn’t said too much either, other than noting that the planes that really got shot up were the ones that flew in after an attack to take pictures. The planes doing the attacking usually didn’t get nearly as much damage. Also, he has a soft spot for the F4 since it could take an enormous amount of damage and still make it back to base.

So, I haven’t had to make the sacrifice of losing someone I cared about to war. However, I do my best to remember what they have done for me and for the rest of us. We continue to have more freedom of speech, action, and self-defense than probably anywhere else in the world. People can say things here that would land them in jail in most countries, and as P.J. O’Rourke has pointed out, not only do we not punish them, many of them are given a national forum and actually treated as if they had something intelligent to say (insert your favorite punching-bag here). However, our freedom of speech also means that we can tell people when their opinions are stupid. This goes for each other as well as our goverment officials. Being able to criticize all of them without fear of reprisal, president included, is incredibly important and very rare even in Western nations.

Since I am of a conservative bent, the freedom of self-defense is important to me as well. We as individuals have both the right and responsibility to defend ourselves and our fellow citizens from predators both human and animal. This has been an intrinsic freedom since the founding fathers first knocked together the document that set the framework for the experiment we’ve been participating in for over 200 years, and it is one I’m very passionate about. The number of states that support concealed carry is increasing, as are those that support castle doctrines. In this arena our freedoms are returning to their former status, and I hope it continues.

The ability to defend oneself is directly tied to self-determinism, yet another freedom we enjoy. People of different ethnicity, races, and religions are freer here than anywhere else in the world to better themselves. We don’t have that perfect yet, but overall we’re doing a damn good job. If you are willing to work hard and be self-reliant you can raise yourself to just about any height. In most countries if you aren’t properly connected by family or caste, you can forget it.

Naysayers, note that most people who are willing to try will raise themselves high enough to be happy and then stop. Once one hits the comfort zone it’s time to enjoy life and take up a hobby or two.

Your life in this country is truly what you make it to be, and freedoms of speech and self-determinism (which encompasses self-defense) are some of the most important factors contributing to our lives. People all over the world would not be trying to come here if this place weren’t great, and today is a good day to realize that if you haven’t noticed it before.

Breaking policy, this was cross-posted to protein wisdom

I’ve got about a week left before I go back to finish one last month of research. I’ve spent the weeks climbing the steep learning curve of a new language, C#, and a new IDE (integrated development environment). I went from being annoy at the implied laziness of using something like visual studio to a convert. It does so many things for you. It auto-completes variable names and object method calls. Furthermore, if what you are typing isn’t an auto-completion option, the chances are you are making a mistake of some kind. If you hover over a variable, it tells you its type.

Glorious, especially for one who is getting older and whose memory isn’t as sharp as it was when one was, say, ten years old.

Now that I’ve been sucked in, the question is what the future will bring. I already got a $250 pay cut for the month because I didn’t get the salary in writing and my employer’s memory is, apparently, not as good as it should be. Live and learn. I just hope he pays me in time because I will have to make an estimated payment to the fed and state government for the taxes. Yeesh.

I guess I’m going to be on his payroll again after June, but he is so squishy on this stuff I cannot be sure. He cannot seem to make a decision until the last minute.

I’m a little on the fence on this. On one hand, I get to work at home. On the other hand, he doesn’t have much money so I have no idea how much he can pay me. As long as I’m doing development it works out from a resume standpoint, but I am always incredibly broke.

Today I got a talk about whether or not I “believe” in this project. To me, that is kind of dumb in a way. In the vast majority of cases, employers want you to believe in a project because it’s a way of getting more work out of you without having to pay for it. Pardon my cynicism, but I have never seen it otherwise. I am not sharing in any positive outcome of this project (as in, I won’t share in the profits if it sells big time), so why would I give more effort than I’m being paid for? To me, that’s foolish.

Life is not about work.

So, no, I don’t “believe” in it. I think it will work. The work I do will give me experience in a modern programming language, which moves me closer to my goal of making decent money within a few years. But unless I have a stake in the outcome, I cannot get really excited about it.

No reasonable person would.

People often call Hitchens an alcoholic.

I say, “No, Sir. He is not an alcoholic.”

Alcoholics go to meetings.

He’s a drunk.

You would not believe the day I’ve had.

I dragged myself out of bed when I heard the banging on the door. I knew it was a shipment of a drive with Important Information on it. I barely found my keys in time, but luckily my roommate/landlord in the lower unit of the duplex had answered the door thus making it possible for me to actually sign for that package. At the same time I found a box containing my latest hard drive purchase on the porch.

The plan was for me to copy the contents of the shipped USB drive to my new drive just purchased.

Ha.

After another few hours of rest, I decided to get down to business. The first thing I discovered is that I did not have a serial ATA cable lying around. Thought I did, didn’t. So, I went out to buy one. I may have annoyed the populace because I haven’t showered since Monday.

I live alone and have no S.O. Who cares?

After I got home, I installed the new drive. Simple. Then I tried to hook up the USB drive. Not simple.

It took a very long time and connecting to two different windows machines before I realized that the file system on the USB drive was a linux file system. And there my troubles began.

I’m running Redhat 9.0 on my linux box. That is ancient in geek world. USB devices are not well supported. I spent mucho time screwing around with that with the guy who is paying me right now. No dice.

So, to make a long story short, I realize that I had an extra drive lying around that I could install yet another linux on and not hurt what I had going. About that time I managed to send the USB drive onto the floor in a suicide leap.

It now makes really strange noises, none of which sound like noises a drive should make. “It’s dead, Jim.”

However, my plan is not working since I cannot install a new version of linux on my machine. Ubunto wants nothing to do with my hardware.

You have to laugh, really. I spent 11 hours on this today and got NOWHERE!

Ha.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

I have CNN on for some reason which is probably because I was running my VCR and turned it off. WHere I am, channel 3 is CNN.

They just said that everyone who was involved in the Republican debate was a conservative. My head exploded. Not one of them is a conservative in the sense I know. Neither is our current president.

The only conservative is Fred Thompson. He hasn’t declared yet.

Ariana Huffington just called them all Neanderthals. She’s a very bright person. I’m attractive and wealthy.

Before this came on there was a fluff piece about Larry King’s last 5o years. I enjoyed that, because we all knew it was fluff. Fluff is perfectly fine, as long as we all know when the fluff is flying.

I”m switching to FauxNewz where I know and they know when they’re full of it.

By the way, Chuck Schumer is a pedantic asshole moron. I loathe him.

I have officially suspended my post-doc for a month to write some code. However, since I have not been provided with the source yet, I am spinning my wheels so far.

Just finishing off the not so good whiskey I bought on the advice of others. Well, there will be some left over. One has one’s limits.

Watched a bio on Norman Rockwell which was made for a TeeVee in the classroom thingy so no commercials. Not bad. I’ve admired his work for a long time. I think it was art. I don’t think that much of contemporary art is, in fact, art.

Anyway, I’m locked into coding until June. I don’t think there will be more funding after that, so I expect to be doing a normal job by August. The guy providing the funding thinks it can happen in some other way, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I really cannot figure out why he thinks he needs me. I think I’ve done pretty much enough to make his thing work. Any further research probably goes outside my expertise which means anyone could do it.

There is no compelling need to keep me on, beyond my to him unproven ability to code.

For me, it’s a good deal. I get to learn C# and dot-Net crap and get paid for it. So far my research has shown me that I can do it without too much difficulty.

Eh, whatever. Time to go to bed.